Western Digital Launches WD Sentinel DX4200 NAS

Western Digital is mostly known for their hard drives, but they also create and sell complete ready to deploy setups. As such they have just launched their newest addition to the SMB range (Small and Medium Businesses), the WD Sentinel DX4200. A NAS with plenty of data and backup protection, redundant networking ports and a redundant power option.

 “The WD Sentinel DX4200 provides the enterprise grade storage and file services capabilities of Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 workgroup, in a compact package that is ideal for to the SMB segment,” said John Loveall, Principal Program Manager, Windows Server and System Center, Microsoft. “We are pleased to work with WD to serve our mutual customers.”

The new NAS comes in two versions with either 8 or 16 TB capacity pre-stocked. Western Digital of course used their own 7200 RPM Se enterprise-class drives here, so the reliability should be top. These drives are usually used in data-centres among others and you can configure the setup as either RAID 1 or RAID 5. Of course it supports automatic migration and capacity expansion. The boot-drive isn’t a tiny flash module in this device but rather a 2.5-inch harddrive with the option to add a second one in RAID 1 mode for data redundancy.

The new WD DX4200 is powered by an Intel Atom C2338 dual-core CPU and has 4GB ECC RAM. The RAM is expandable to 16GB if the default 4 shouldn’t be enough. For additional external connections it has four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports. It also features dual Gigabit Ethernet with failover protection and has a VGA port for maintenance. The operating system on the device is Windows Storage Server 2012 R2 Workgroup, a choice that will be loved by most businesses but not so much by home-users. Since this however is a device aimed at the enterprise market, it can only be seen as good thing.

While the system is powered by a Windows Operating system, it still supports all the sharing functions you could want. Windows XP to Windows 8 is supported with CIFS/Samba, Mac OS X with Bonjour and Linux/Unix with NFS. It also features FTP, WebDAV, normal and encrypted web-server (HTTP/HTTPS) and Active Directory. Besides the normal NAS functions it also supports iSCSI SAN to work as block level storage for virtualized environments.

This is also a NAS that should keep your valuable data safe from nasty people. The front is secured with a sturdy bezel lock and on the rear there is a Kensington style lock to secure it to the premises. When it is powered on, it boots into a secured UEFI environment to prevent root-kits and other surprises from working. The security is further increased by the software measures deployed in the Windows environment. The redundant power supplies are another thing that can give ease of mind; if one should fail, the second will kick in.

The device itself measures 205.7 x 223.5 x 170 mm and weighs 6.64 kg. As an added bonus, you’ll get 1 year of WD Guardian Pro support where their skilled team is ready to assist you with any trouble you might have. The new WD Sentinel DX4200 is available now and will cost you £1,558.80 for the 16TB model and £1,198.80 for the 8TB model, both incl. VAT and free shipping.

Thank you WesternDigital for providing us with these information

Images courtesy of WesternDigital